Recent advances in the quality and ease of use of digital devices that capture, produce and/or generate digital still images, digital video images, audio recordings, animations, and other types of audio and/or visual content data files have allowed the creation of large collections of content data files. Such collections of content data files can be stored in a common storage location and can be distributed across a wide variety of storage locations. Further, collections of content data files can be formed in an ad hoc manner using content searching tools that are adapted to search large network systems, such as the Internet, for particular content. Accordingly, it is becoming increasingly common for users of a display device to be faced with the challenge of navigating through a large number content data files to be able to locate and access a content data file of interest. One way to help a user to do this is to provide a graphical metaphor that can be presented by the display device to help to provide a visual structure that facilitates navigation through the content data files of the collection. Such a graphical metaphor is usually referred to as a graphical user interface (GUI). Such a GUI conveniently organizes and groups digital content in a collection and allows a user to browse such organized and grouped content using one or more displayed screens.
A number of recently introduced GUIs provide users of content data file collections with different methods for navigating among content data files in the collection. Some navigation methods may work better than others, depending on the circumstances of use and the nature of the content in a collection. It would therefore be desirable to provide automatic methods for selecting from among available navigational and organizational methods to select from among different navigation methods those that can better enable a user-friendly and efficient navigation.